Carolina Cordero Dyer
Greenburgh, New York 

November 19, 2004, 2:00 a.m. I’m standing in the birthing room of Lenox Hill Hospital, Manhattan, watching helplessly as Claudia gets sick. We don’t know what’s going on.  A nurse walks in, looks at the confusion on our faces, and says to Claudia, “honey, didn’t anyone tell you?  You’re going to have your babies tonight”. Words cannot describe what it’s like to realize that your children are about to be born.  It is absolutely miraculous … and terrifying.

Of course we weren’t ready.  Who ever is?  It was 12 days before the date scheduled on my calendar.  My calendar is infallible.  We hadn’t packed the hospital bags, the battery died on the darn camera, and besides, we had an appointment at 10:00 a.m. with the attorney to sign our updated wills.

I had to call Rebecca, our attorney.  I dialed what I assumed was her office number, and a live person answered the phone at that ungodly hour.  She said, “I knew it was you and I knew you were calling to tell me you’re having your babies.”  I had a premonition.

At 3:44 and 3:47 a.m. our beautiful children, Carmen Lucia and Diego Alexander, were born and our lives were forever altered. 

Here we are, twenty months later.  We survived the sleepless nights, and the endless diapers, and we’ve all adjusted marvelously to our new, big, happy, healthy, family. 

There’s a hitch, though.  Even though I’m Carmen and Diego’s mother, my name did not appear on their birth certificate and I had no legal status whatsoever.  We had to go through second-parent adoption.  As with any adoption, it requires a social worker home study, a criminal history check, financial history, family history, and health records – basically my whole life.  And not just my life – but also Claudia’s.  Even though she is the legally recognized mother, since we live together the State must also deem her fit when determining whether I’m fit to adopt my children.   On September 2^nd 2005, ten months and $9,000 later, my children received the right to call me Mommy.  

When you have children, it becomes immediately obvious why marriage is so important.  Marriage protects families.   And without being able to marry Claudia, my family is vulnerable.   So many, many things that heterosexual married couples take for granted are not available or are only available after costly and complicated legal maneuvers like health insurance, social security survivor benefits, parental rights and obligations to what happens when we die.

Heterosexual couples don’t call their attorneys as they are about to give birth. Heterosexual couples don’t have to make sure they live in a state that allows second-parent adoption.  They don’t need to make sure that both parents are working – otherwise their families would be left without health insurance.  Heterosexual couples know that when either one of them passes, their hard-earned Social Security benefits will be available to support the surviving spouse.   They don’t even think about these things.

We are so deeply committed as a family and care so much about protecting our family in every way we can that we made the decision to marry – no matter what it took.  On August 6, 2005, we made a road trip to Toronto with 20 of our dearest friends and family.    On that beautiful, glorious day in Toronto, Claudia and I committed our lives to one another and promised our children that we would always be together and we would always take care of them.  Two weeks after we returned to New York, Omi did go in for the chemotherapy that her doctor had been urging her to have.  Our marriage was so important to her that she postponed her treatment. 

Strangely, people who do not believe that Claudia & I should have the right to marry, they claim that our marriage hurts children and hurts the institution of matrimony.  Nothing, absolutely nothing could be further from the truth.